.png)
4 hours ago
7
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 60 Palestinians, including 22 children, in what appeared to be the gravest challenge yet to the increasingly fragile US-brokered ceasefire and the deadliest day since the truce began.
The strikes, which according to Gaza’s civil defence agency killed many children and injured 200 people, took place hours after the US president, Donald Trump, said “nothing” would jeopardise the ceasefire agreement he helped broker.
On Tuesday evening, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered the strikes after a firefight between Palestinian militants and Israeli troops , and amid growing anger over Hamas turning over body parts of a hostage whose remains Israeli troops had recovered two years before.
Netanyahu called an emergency meeting to discuss what he called Hamas violations of the ceasefire, as far-right figures in the Israeli government clamoured for a return to war.
The bombardment prompted Hamas, which denied responsibility for the attack, to delay a planned handover of another hostage’s remains, which had been scheduled for Tuesday night.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday, Trump said “nothing” would jeopardise the ceasefire, but added Israel “should hit back” if its soldiers were killed. “They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” he said.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, said earlier that the ceasefire was holding despite the “skirmishes”.
However, Tuesday night’s attack exposed all the frailties of a ceasefire that, from the outset, has been marred by violence. Before the latest overnight strikes, Gaza’s media office accused Israel of committing 80 violations since the ceasefire began, killing 97 Palestinians and injuring a further 230.
The Gaza civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic and terrifying”, calling the strikes “a clear and flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement”.
“The Israeli strikes targeted tents for displaced people, homes, and the vicinity of a hospital in the strip,” he told Agence France-Presse.
When asked if the strikes were a resumption of the full-scale invasion, a spokesperson for the IDF told the Guardian on Tuesday the military “can’t elaborate on the scale yet”.
However, on Wednesday, the IDF said it had reinstated the Gaza ceasefire.
The Israeli military published footage of what it said were members of Hamas reburying a body in order to “stage a false discovery” for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which it said was Hamas “attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies”. Hamas has yet to comment on the claims.
The news has enraged Israelis, with the far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich lashing out at Hamas and calling on Netanyahu to resume the war.
Under the ceasefire agreement, which took effect on 10 October, Hamas is required to return the remains of all Israeli hostages as soon as possible. In exchange, Israel has agreed to hand over 15 Palestinian bodies for each Israeli.
Hamas has so far returned the remains of 15 hostages, with 13 bodies still in the territory.
The militant group has said it does not know the precise whereabouts of all the bodies, saying it has lost contact with several of its units that had been holding the captives and were reportedly killed during Israeli bombardments.
Although Trump has conceded that some of the bodies are difficult to reach, he said “others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not”. “It may have to do with the disarming of Hamas,” he added.
Israel has made Hamas’s disarmament a central objective, describing it as a key condition for bringing an end to the two-year war.
On Sunday, Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, said the group’s weapons were “tied to the existence of occupation and aggression”. He said: “If the occupation ends, these weapons will be handed over to the state.” It remained unclear whether he was alluding to the still-unformed Palestinian governing authority expected to take over Gaza’s administration once Hamas relinquishes control.
